Last weekend, I broke my 20-year habit of social distancing and met up with fellow Razzball writers at an event worthy of our time. Your author came as close as he’ll ever get to meeting his hero, Bud Black. It was the World Series in reverse, a battle between two of the four most empty teams in all of baseball. In another world I live in California or Miami and I can catch the Athletics playing the Marlins. In this world, however, we are watching the Colorado Rockies take on the Chicago White Sox. What a glory it was to see.
100 degrees in the role of play, my first memory is of burning the reproduction in my loins just trying to sit in my seat. Next is the gathering of some of our writers, bathed in a football game that stood as a metaphor for the futility of each group. There was complete indifference to many processes that could be achieved at high temperatures, but it was as if I was watching the entire team of Chris Getzes and Bud Blacks play each other with the full knowledge that there is no fun in failing. I’ve watched some ridiculously bad baseball in my life, but there’s a lot of public awareness about rebuilding teams and the trade barrier that gets in the way of how the game is played. It’s depressing to watch.
It reminded me of being a teenager on a rainy summer afternoon stumbling across old LEGO sets, and I think I might rekindle that childlike wonder. After mulling over the building ideas, I put down the pieces and felt a wave of grief pass through my body. My days of living alone in the basement, creating worlds, with no responsibilities other than eating my vegetables and brushing my teeth, were gone. I was hurtling faster and faster into a world that valued deadlines, high performance, calculations, and greed more than I could value my intelligence.
I put the pieces away, and my mom asked me if she heard me playing with my old toys at dinner. I casually looked around the table and lied about moving the LEGO bins to sample the beats in the song I was recording. It seemed like they knew I was lying, but I didn’t want to tell them my childhood was gone and it felt like something in me died that day.
Watching the White Sox and Rockies, I felt like I was my mother and those players were me. For the players, innocence and dreams of playing baseball are gone, as I watch them try to shake off that nine-inning loss.
Other than that, I enjoyed the company and especially appreciated Keelin walking me around the park until we got some delicious Cuban sandwiches to munch on as the game drew to a close. May you all be lucky enough to find yourself among such wonderful people.
Blurbstomp reminder
We will analyze player blurbs on a given night, knowing that 1-2 writers are usually responsible for all player writing posted within an hour of game results. We will look at:
Boy Scout’s Flowery Diction A badge– exploring how words create meaning, sometimes destroy meaning altogether
Mathematical Participation Ribbon – Multiple Ratings and Attributes in a given blurb
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given a glimpse of a player who promises too much and delivers too little.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque – blurbs don’t always need to be heard, friend
The Max Scherzer Crown of Leaking Insane Rage – slurred words angry at the player are not good
The hope is that by the end of the season, we’ll all feel more confident about our player evaluations when it comes to giving up. We will read the blurbs and be swayed by extreme speculation, erroneous injury reporting, and micro-hype. I’ll know I’ve done my job when Gray posts, and there isn’t a single question about the contributors in the comment section. Proceed to Roto Wokeness!
Mathematical Participation Ribbon
Jarred Kelenic went 3-for-4 with a run scored against the Cardinals on Wednesday.
After hitting a homer in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Cardinals, Kelenic collected three more hits in the second game. His base hit in the eighth inning drove in Atlanta’s only run of the game. The 24-year-old has performed well since taking over the lead. He is slashing .279/.318/.457 with eight homers and three steals in 223 plate appearances.
The source: Rotoworld
Arguing about context in fantasy games is like having a hearty and healthy bowel movement; most of us do it all the time without raising a single suspicious eyebrow. And if you raise both eyebrows? Well, we would have been more surprised than suspicious. And if there were no eyebrows? The answer to this riddle is Billy Zane.
Kelenic was on fire and not just hanging out. You check out his last 7/14/30 games in the stats filter of your favorite fantasy site and watch a man go from relative zero to towering hero. His seasonal line up slash Buzz’s girlfriend: Woof. However, Acuna is done for the year, Michael Harris is out, and Adam Duvall has nearly completed his transition to Adam Dunn. We will now refer to him as Adam Dunnvall. I can think of very bad portmanteaus, but I can think of many better things in the world: The smell of the lake in the morning, Arthur Russell, the knowledge that every five years children come up with a new and strange insult, when you read. the last word of the book and slowly close the cover, when you find a parking space at midnight in your neighborhood with a lot of cars and yours is one of them, how certain smells work as portals to the vision of your past that is very clear. it escapes nostalgia and simply exists like magic, when you panic that you didn’t pay for parking but didn’t get a ticket… Yes. All these things are better than that portmanteau. It’s very good.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Nolan Gorman went 0-for-3 with a walk and a double against the Braves in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader.
Gorman hit four in a three-game span from June 2-4. Since then, he’s 6-for-71 with two extra-base hits (both homers) and a 30/4 K/BB average. He’s hitting just .188 overall, and the Cardinals may need to start thinking that José Fermín deserves to be hit in his place.
Source: Rotoworld
I think this blurb is great, but it made me remember that the Cardinals gave Jordan Walker less than a month at the start of last season, and he was able to hit double digits to start his career. Then he was relegated to “working on things,” which seemed to ruin his swing and get into his head. The malpractice defense was cited at his trial, and for some reason the malpractice defense is not mentioned in Mr. Nolan Gorman. And yes, look at that 6-71 with two homers since the beginning of the month, and yet the Cardinals stuck with him. Maybe the replacement (with Walker included) doesn’t look particularly inspired, but there is a distinct lack of anger in the reorganization: Nolan Gorman versus Jordan Walker.
Oli Marmol is trying to fight for Bud Black’s title. I don’t think he has the backbone to make it happen.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Brent Rooker went 2-for-4 with a double on Wednesday against the Angels.
The Athletics keep losing, but Rooker keeps hitting. The double was his 32nd extra-base hit of the season and his OPS rose to .845, 20th in the league among professional players. Rooker could be in the spotlight in the second half if the A’s decide to trade him before the deadline.
Source: Rotoworld
Trade deadline speculation is fun as heck, but it can play with a person’s heart. To be clear, I’m not really complaining about the content of the teasers. I would like to note that if Brett Rooker is not traded to almost any other team, there is a good chance that he will be drafted. I don’t say this with any kind of informed opinion. Nary a fangraphs or baseballsavant splits page is referenced. I just look at the way the young and old players are distributed (especially in the field) and I can’t discount the possibility that the team leader will notice even a .100 difference in OPS carried, and boom Rooker is out of everyday work.
See what I’m doing there? It’s incredibly easy to form a hypothesis, a hedge with an awful lot of caveats, and it still sounds like your hunch might be worth pursuing. The trade deadline is a Farmer’s Almanack of announcements that range from the annoying to the boring. Every IRL and fantasy baseball site will clearly state that the team’s closer will be 100% sold at the deadline, which will cause you to burn a roster spot (or two). Deadlines come and go, and that’s always close to the team. Subsequent blurbs rarely refer to hyperbole, preferring to offer a passing, “It seemed like a sure thing…” or something of that nature.
In the end, we are at the mercy of the Old God, one cunning trickster, hell-bent on creating water cooler conversations in an age where the water cooler has been replaced by Twitter, and the gossiping adults around say the water cooler has been replaced. by 10-year-old social media mavens and state intelligence farms. Is anyone successful?
Boy Scouts Flowery Diction Badge
Colton Cowser came off the bench to hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth as the Orioles beat the Braves 4-2 on Wednesday.
Cowser was benched in favor of Austin Hays against the right-hander tonight, but that’s not something the Orioles need to do with any real frequency. Although Cowser’s numbers have dipped after a hot start, his batted ball stats remain strong. He’s certainly one of the Orioles’ top three outfield options against righties.
Source: Rotoworld
This post here appears on June 12, pardner. We all know what happens next, right? Every single person with two big cartoon eyes can see that there is probably only one full-time player on that roster, and he’s an MVP candidate. Can you think of the last time a major league team had multiple players at almost every offensive position?
Finally, we have an example where someone’s batting profile is raised, but he produced at a very low level without even a faint hint that he was good. While the advanced stats will certainly help us find outliers, they are fool proof, especially for younger players. The league is getting the book for hitters too fast these days, like Julio Rodriguez, who is protected from the list of one tree on a desert field infested by the historic hordes of cicadas. It seems like every team has realized that they can throw him a lot of balls and he will bowl most of them. Or Nolan Jones, who I can’t even research because the pain is too great.
Happy Fourth, everyone. May the blurbs be with you!
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